Get ready for another round of war between humans and orcs as the epic struggle for control of Azeroth continues in WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness, a real-time strategy game from Blizzard Entertainment. The same protagonists last seen in the original WarCraft: Orcs and Humans go at it again but with new and enhanced weapons, more creatures and an expanded fantasy game world encompassing land, sea and air.

Both orc and human perspectives are supported through an equal division of the game's 28 campaign scenarios. The game contains new features such as the "fog of war" option that elevates strategic planning to a higher level, much larger maps and combined-arms tactics. New units in the sequel include elven archers, gryphons, death knights, battleships, airships, dragons and more.

For fans craving even additional scenarios, both a sound and map editor have been included, ensuring longer life of the product. Multi-player action is supported via LAN (up to eight players), modem or direct link, with the latter two accommodating two players. The Macintosh version supports the AppleTalk network and TCP/IP connections.

WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness provides the player with two interface and preference choices for gameplay. The first configures keyboard and mouse commands to replicate functionality of the style used in WarCraft: Orcs and Humans that allowed automatic centering on the mini-map by clicking the right mouse button. The second configuration replaces that functional key press by giving the player the capability to induce automatic commands instead with the loss of auto-centering on the mini-map.

In addition to an in-depth background story regarding the warring factions, the manual contains complete information on legends, creatures and resources of Azeroth along with full disclosure of tendencies and attributes inherent to the Nations of the Alliance (human faction) and the Orcish Horde. These include data on units (air, ground and naval), spells, buildings and a "dependency" tree for tracking pre-requisites during development of each race's infrastructure.